


auribus teneo lupum

by theworthofhollin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: AND ITS A SECRET, CLARKE IS AN ALPHA, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Werewolves, kind of?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 07:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3682524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theworthofhollin/pseuds/theworthofhollin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's that saying...you can take the wolf out of the wild, but...oh, she forgets the words. </p><p>(werewolf au: clarke is used to keeping secrets)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. show me your teeth

**Author's Note:**

> AURIBUS TENEO LUPUM: [ancient latin proverb] "i hold the wolf by the ears"

Clarke’s not sure when she first discovered The Secret. Maybe she’s always known, deep down in her bones, that she was never quite _right_ on the Ark. Everything was always too small, too contained, no matter how much space she had.

Her dad told her it was because they wouldn’t let her run. She remembers looking at him in confusion, because of course she’s run before; they have scheduled exercise hours everyday for children, mandated in a fitness bay where everyone is assigned a treadmill and space to burn away their excess energy.

His eyes are sad when he answers, “Yes, but you’ve never _run_.”

-

She’s fourteen when it starts. Clarke’s been feeling off, not sickly, just— off, all week. Her skin feels too thin and her blood runs hot, leaving her violent and mean and hungry. Her stomach turns and twists while she’s laying in the dark off her bunk, and she crawls out of bed for water to try and stem the pain, thinking vaguely, maybe its her time of the month? She hasn’t gotten her period yet, but maybe this is it—just her growing up?

She turns on the bathroom light, and shrieks, because her normally pale blue eyes are shining back, reflective, angry, and bright bright gold, and when she opens her mouth her canines are sharpened to a vicious point.

-

Her parents explain it to her in hushed tones through the metal of the bathroom door.

“We never meant to hide it from you, sweetie, it’s just—we hoped it wouldn’t pass down.” Her mother sighs, and Clarke opens the door a tiny crack to see her parent’s faces, long and drawn in the dim light of the apartment.

“It just means you’ll have to be careful. But we love you so so much, Clarke, honey, and we’ll—we’ll figure it out.” Her father is watching her, and he smiles, tight and a little nervous, before he reaches for her through the crack. He’s kneeling near the opening so he can look her in the eye when he whispers, “I always knew you were too much like me for your own good.” His eyes flash bright red and he presses her lips to her forehead, and something in her settles, the panic fading as if it never existed at all.

-

According to her dad, there are only four other wolves on the Ark, from what he can tell. One is an old man named Leo who lives in Sector 7 on Factory station, that Jake Griffin met on accident one day when running a diagnostic on the ventilation systems. The other, a woman from Mecha station, was floated last year for attacking a guard. Jake uses this as a warning for Clarke— the wolf must be controlled. No excuses. 

Apparently with practice, she’ll be able to scent out other wolves as well, not that she’ll need to. Leo is aging, and with her father as the only alpha, they are the last of their kind— and when they die, Clarke knows she’ll be trapped in space, alone. 

Her pack is already so small, she worries. Wells can never know, and their bloodline is fading fast. Wolves aren’t built to run alone. And, she looks around their tiny apartment, they very much aren't meant to live in cages. 

-

Every month, it goes like this.

Unlike what the stories say (and there are _so many_ stories; very few are right, but some are impressively close) the change isn’t really about the moon. It’s biological, in some ways it’s almost like, a virus of some sort, a virus turned mutation--and luckily, this means it can be contained.

They have a system.

Clarke and her father get three weeks of simple existence, going about their days easily and unencumbered: i.e, human. Then, on that singular week in the middle, the shift will surface, slowly. Her teeth will feel sore and just slightly too big in her mouth, her hands will curl inadvertently, as if she’s holding in her claws. She will dream about the smell of blood. Her voice will growl at the edges, and her temper will shorten to dangerous levels, and she can hear _everything_. The world will widen, until she listens to the heartbeats of the family two levels below in order to fall asleep. Her eyes sharpen to the point of perfect clarity, until she can count the freckles on a guard’s face from across the mess hall at night.

Clarke watches his pulse thump steadily during dinner, and tries not to wonder what he’d taste like.

This is around the time when Abby Griffin injects them both with a concentrated dosage of LN4, a modified sleep drug that allows Jake and Clarke to reign in the urge for an extra two days, before they succumb to the secondary tranquilizer dosage, and sleep through the shift in a locked compartment in the back of their living quarters.

Clarke has never been awake for the shift. And if everything goes they way they hope, she never will.

But then, she knows the saying. The best laid plans…

-

Jake Griffin stands in front of the airlock, arms calmly at his side. Six guards line the edges of the bay, blocking the glass doors while Abby Griffin wraps her daughter in her arms and holds on tight. Clarke could tear the hearts out of each of their chests in a blink of an eye, but she can’t. The wolf must be contained. No excuses. 

“Shhh, baby, please, calm down, calm down, I love you, hold on, _please_ ,” her mother is muttering under her breath, voice choked with tears.

Clarke doesn't know what she looks like, right now, right on the cusp of a shift, barely holding her skin together, shaking and trembling with rage and panic while her mother whispers soothing words in her ears and tries not to wince in pain as Clarke’s claws bite through the sleeves of the jacket she's wearing. Jaha stands in front of them both, reading the charges in monotone, and Clarke can feel his eyes on her. She can smell the thread of fear as he watches her fall apart. 

Her lips pull back over her teeth in a snarl.

Her father’s eyes find hers through the glass and he shakes his head sharply, the iris flaring red just long enough to force her to settle.

The airlock doors open with a sigh.

Clarke screams and screams and screams as her father is sucked into the black; the animal in her raging wild, rabid, panicked-- until she feels a familiar needle pierce her skin. She crumples, and right before she lets the drug take her she feels a a searing pain, like something is ripping and surging into her chest-- and then her vision whites out.

She wakes up in their quarters two days later and sees her reflection in the mirror, only to sink to her knees when blood-red eyes look back.


	2. hungry like the

“They’re not killing you, Clarke, _Clarke_ , listen to me—” her mother hisses at her as the wristband snaps closed. Clarke’s senses are running wild, and she can feel the remnants of LN4 lingering in her systems as the guards manhandle her into submission. Her last shift was barely three weeks ago, sedated in her cell, and she can feel the wolf howling under her skin.

“What? Mom, wait, I—“ a guard shoves her against the wall, jarring her. She’s been locked in solitary for months, now, practically a full year, and she can’t quite contain the growl that rumbles through her chest. He jerks back as she snaps her teeth.

“The fuck—somebody hold the bitch—“

Abby pushes past them before the one at her left reaches for his stun gun. “Clarke. _Calm down._ They’re not killing you, they’re sending you to the ground.”

Clarke registers the words distantly, heart beating fast, and she instinctively slams her elbow back against the guard holding her down, knocking him to his knees, and then turns to her mother, the panicked question already on her lips (how is that any different from a death sentence? How are we supposed to survive?) when Clarke hears the fizzle of a stun baton charging and turns back just in time to catch the shaft of the mechanism in her fist. The shock pulses through her hand, and she feels her eyes flash bright red with the pain, and she snarls viciously and then another taser burns into the back of her neck, and everything goes dark.

In the fading blackness, she feels her mother slide something into the pocket of her shirt.

-

She almost rips Wells’ throat out when she wakes up, but the harness holds her in. In a way, she’s grateful. Clarke doesn’t need her first act of freedom to be shifting in public. She can’t afford to let it loose. (The wolf must be contained. No excuses.)

They crash on earth in a blaze of heat, the smell of blood thick in the air from the bodies of the two boys who wouldn’t listen. She’s too shaken to feel the animal side under the roiling emotions on top, at first—sometimes the human half of her takes over, but she can feel the loss of her pack still, deep in her bones (her mother, just her mother now).

The alpha portion of her is heavy and hollow in her chest, still too new, too alien, even after a year of torturous silence. What is an alpha without a pack, she wonders. Just another lonely monster, at best.

A scent cuts through the smell of blood and metal. New and sharp and warm with _something_ …

As soon as the harnesses release, she pushes Wells’ hands to the side and weaves through to the front, intent on reaching the hatch doors. Clarke has to physically shove several figures out of the way, and the ease at which she does it, this five foot nothing blonde knocking around 170 plus pounds of teenage male with the flick of her wrist, draws quite a few impressed eyes. She doesn’t notice, too busy taking in the source of the scent.

“That’s the girl they found under the floor,” a boy whispers under his breath, and Clarke watches as the two siblings, both dark haired and lovely and thick with rage, clutch each other desperately. She flares her nostrils, and can feel Wells as he steps up to her back, solid and familiar, and when the older sibling, the boy—man—guard—whatever he is, pulls the lever on the dropship door, the air whooshes past her and the lingering scent is overpowered by everything _else_.

The woods beckon. Clarke feels her eyes burn red, and smiles.

She’s running before her feet even hit the dirt.

-

Bellamy Blake does bad things to her.

See, when she says that sentence in her head, it sounds wrong. Not bad, like, _bad,_ but—he keeps her angry. She can’t afford to be angry. She’s been on edge ever sense they landed, her senses on overdrive with constant fear and simultaneously fighting against instincts long forgotten, long repressed—reigning in the impulse to bite and hunt and run. The wall, being assembled slowly and steadily, helps to keep some of the impulses at bay, but not all of them. She’s much more tactile, lately, brushing her hands against everyone she’s speaks with, constantly marking even the youngest and weakest in the camp. She wants to take care of them, she wants to guard them, protect them, (run with them, a small part of her whispers). But The Secret is even more precious on the ground. Clarke has witnessed firsthand what the 100 can do out of fear.

(She wonders how easy it would be for her to just leave—to launch herself through the hastily built gates, the bare bones of her new cage disappearing behind her as she runs wild through the trees. But something always holds her back.)

So, while some things change, others stay the same, and her mother’s gift (hastily shoved into her side pocket as Clarke faded into unconsciousness) turns out to be four doses of LN4, the clear liquid contained in thin white tubes wrapped in plastic. Enough to last her until the Ark makes it to the ground.

The looming inevitability of her next shift is the one thing that really puts her on edge— actually, no; Bellamy Blake is still easily a contender.

“Brave princess,” he calls her as he leans in, his voice low and liquid sweet, and she wants to press him down into the earth and place her mouth against his neck until he stills under her teeth. Something in her rumbles happily at the thought. Instead, she holds her wristband away and steps forward, into his curved stance, relaxed and easy, utterly unconcerned with his attempt at a power play.

“You really don’t wanna play this game,” she whispers, and lets a flicker of blood red burn behind her eyes.

Bellamy steps back on instinct, eyes wide, and she can hear his heartbeat stumble clumsily as she brushes past.

It’s the problem, Clarke knows, because she never acted like this before. Sure, she’s never been an alpha— until recently, but she’s never reacted to someone like this. Bellamy just makes her so _angry_. Sometimes for no reason at all! It’s like he just pulls the wolf to the surface. When Clarke is angry, her control is tenuous at best. And if there is one thing in her life she needs to keep sharp, its control. It’s why she’s so comfortable with letting Bellamy take on the leadership role in the camp. She can’t afford to let the alpha part of her overpower her common sense, and besides, something about the Blake’s make her feel less…alone, in a way. She’s not connected with them, not really, but they already feel like a part of her. Like Wells, and her mother. They feel like pack, but not.

Sometimes, when she looks at them, fury and hunger in every line of their bodies, she thinks they fit more like wolves than she ever did.

-

They find Wells outside the wall when Clarke is less than two days away from the change. She hasn’t taken the drug yet, because unlike on the Ark, there is no way to lock doors in her tent. She can’t just hide away for three days. She’d been thinking about telling Wells, actually, as a show of trust, and more accurately, guilt, (she thinks her father would understand), but now…now she has no one.

Clarke’s not sure what happens after she finds her best friend’s body, all she knows is that she comes to her senses an hour later and she’s a solid ten miles away from the camp. She has to track her way back. It steadies her grief.

Octavia is the one who brings her the knife.

“I just thought you should see it. I wanted to show you before anyone else.” If Clarke were less focused on holding herself together (in the literal sense, in this case) she would notice how the other girl sounds almost confused at her actions, as if she’s not quite sure why she brought the knife to Clarke first.

Instead of responding, she lifts the knife close to her face, uncaring of her audience. She turns it over slowly, taking note of the letters on the back and the dried brown coloring on the hilt. It smells heavily of boy-sweat and blood, both Murphy’s and Wells’ respectively, and that alone should answer for her, but then something else cuts through. Something sweet, and scared, and lingering. Achingly familiar.

Octavia is still talking. “It’s Murphy’s knife. His initials are on the back. I had Miller send for Bellamy, but I figured we should wait and—“

“It’s not Murphy.”

Octavia and Jasper both look at her sharply. Clarke continues, uncaring. “Murphy didn’t kill him. Its someone else, but I’m not ...I'm not sure who.”

Silence.

Distantly, she hears footsteps nearing their tent with purpose, and she braces herself in preparation for Bellamy to walk into the tent.

The flap opens. “the hell is going on here?” he mutters, predictably, and she doesn’t bother to turn around. Her skin feels like its burning, her teeth feel too big, and she knows if she looks up right now her eyes will be glowing bright, unmistakable red.

Octavia is muttering quickly into her brother’s ear, and Clarke curls her hand around the knife.

“Okay, hey, Clarke.” Bellamy steps away from his sister and moves around the table to her side, slowly, as if he knows what’s going through her mind. “Let’s talk this over.”

“She says its not Murphy.” Jasper’s voice sounds thin and so very young when he speaks up.

“Well, if you’d care to share how you figured that out, princess?”

Clarke wants to answer him, she does, but suddenly the shift is so close, so all consuming, sweeping through her body like a wave of heat and hunger. She gasps and grips the table to steady herself.

“Shit.” Warm, callused hands settle low on her spine. He smells like gunpowder and guilt and rain. “Hey, sit down. Clarke, you need to rest, you look like your gonna puke.

She shakes her head, jerkily. She’s never felt a change come on like this, its – too much its too much its too much—

“Octav—Octavia, get my bag from the dropship—please.”

Bellamy looks at his sister and nods quickly. She sprints out of the tent without a word. Bellamy’s hands maneuver her onto on of the bench seat in the corner of the tent. Jasper looks on with wide-eyes, his heartbeat fluttering like a bird. She’s so tired, like she’s been running for days, and at the same time she just wants to tear something apart. She remembers her dad telling her about this once, about how alphas need anchors in order to hold back the change. An anchor: a steadiness, a calming element, something to grip onto when the wolf gets too wild. But, Clarke’s anchor is dead two times over—one floating and one buried.

She’s on her own, Clarke thinks, as Bellamy snaps something at Jasper about getting his water jug, and hurry. (Well, maybe not entirely.)

The bones in Clarke’s hands turn under the skin. She’s never been awake for this part. It hurts, _oh god_ , it hurts.

“Is she sick?” Jasper asks, worriedly.

Octavia bursts into the tent before anyone can answer. “Got it, got it, what do I—“

“White tubes. Give me…give me one.” Her voice comes out like a growl. Bellamy’s hand stills on her back at the sound before he reaches for the tube in Octavia’s hand.

He unscrews the top and sniffs, recoiling. “What is this? Some kind of drug?”

“Bellamy, just—“ her eyes are flaring red again, she can feel it, and she does her best to look only at the ground. She’s going to have a lot of explaining to do after this, but she can’t think beyond the shift roiling under her skin. “ _Just give it to me.”_

This time he hands her the tube immediately, as if he can’t help it.

She sighs and pulls out the needle and attaches it with shaking hands. The three other delinquents watch in confusion as she shoves the syringe into her chest, the fastest way to reach her heart, before she stands on unsteady legs.

Octavia speaks up first. “What was that?”

“Medicine.” Clarke looks at her hand holding the empty syringe. It’s shaking even harder, and she can feel the drug weighing down her limbs. “I can’t be here right now.”

Bellamy is pissed. “Medicine? The hell are you talking about, princess? You just had a damn panic attack—”

She looks him straight in the eyes and cuts him off. “Bellamy. _I can’t be here right now.”_

His mouth snaps closed, the muscle flexing in his jaw. He steps aside.

She brushes past him and heads for the dropship at a steady lope, knowing that if she turns back at looks at the gates, and the woods beyond, she’ll start running and never come back.

Clarke makes it to the upper level just in time.

She locks the hatch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments give me life, come tell me what you thought! or come hit me up on tumblr @ www.theworthofhollin.tumblr.com!


	3. omega mentality

 

The following days are heavy, and weighted down with constant stress. Her first shift on the ground turned out to be just as disastrous as expected, leaving her worn and scarred when she woke up the next day. But Clarke knows she got lucky—with all the nonstop movement of the days after, Bellamy has had no time to corner her for an explanation.

The first and only time he brings it up is immediately after she wakes, slowly making her way down the ladder from the top level of the dropship. He’s waiting when she emerges from the hatch.

“You wanna tell me what the fuck you were doing up there for a whole night?” he asks, calmly.

Only one night? The doses must be diluted. “Not really,” she sighs. Clarke can imagine what a sight she makes, her hair wild and uncombed with bags under her eyes. Underneath her un-slept-in Henley and jeans, her skin is covered in bruises while her bones and skin reknit themselves together in order to form some semblance of her human body. (She might look human, now, but she doesn’t feel it.) She looks down and notices her shirt is inside out and hastily pulls her jacket around her tight to hide it. Maybe he didn’t notice.

“Shirt’s inside out, princess.”

Fuck.

She scrambles for an easy excuse. “Yeah. Um. I had a fever. It got hot.”

She glad he knows so little about illnesses, because he immediately backs off. “You still sick, then?” Bellamy asks her, uncrossing his arms. He holds the flap of the canvas door out of the way as they step into the morning sunlight, and as she steps under his arm she catches a whiff of that same indistinct thread of scent that’s been distracting her lately. She wants to burrow her face into his neck and just breathe.

She shakes it off and blinks at the sunlight peaking out over the trees. “No, I’m good now. Its, uh, it’s out of my system.”

He’s still watching her, his dark eyes sharp and alert. “Good. Come talk to me once you sleep off the rest and I’ll catch you up. You really do look like something chewed you up and spit you out.”

-

 

The Blake siblings tell her about what happened with Charlotte in hushed whispers around the fire that night. Finn, who’s been following her even more than usual, tries to explain it away, talking about innocence and psychotic breaks--but Clarke just let’s the words flow over her. She wonders what she might’ve done had she been there last night, with the wolf so easily reached.

(Clarke doesn’t really have to wonder, though; she knows what would’ve happened to the poor, little girl who killed Wells and ran into the woods. If Clarke had been there, if Clarke had let go—well, they tell bedtime stories about things like that.)

-

Clarke has never been awake for a shift. She doesn’t know what she looks like when the change fully takes over. She can guess, sort of, because she remembers the first few times of waking up on the Ark after her LN4 sedation to find her pajamas irreparably torn apart at the seams, until her father bought her a waist tie robe to wear to match his. For privacy, he’d say. As if that was still an issue. Regardless, he tried to make her feel as human as possible, even when she felt her most feral. It’s a trait she misses out of nostalgia, now, if nothing else. Being overly human isn’t really a necessity on the ground.

It’s a good thing, she finds, because Clarke is getting so very sick of being human.

-

Raven Reyes falls to Earth in a flaming hunk of scrap metal, and that alone is enough to make an impression— but Clarke is leaning over the girl to check her vitals, completely overlooking the sharp, familiar scent clogging her nostrils when suddenly Raven wakes with a jolt and Clarke rears back and smacks her head on the door frame.

Bright yellow eyes stare back at her in shock, unblinking.

“Um. What the fuck are you?” asks the other girl. Clarke blinks, and is suddenly very aware of Finn at her back.

“Raven?” The boy in question is gaping, dumbstruck, and suddenly their conversation is shunted to the side in favor of a ridiculously intense reunion kiss. Clarke catches the girl’s eye when she finally comes up for air, and let her irises flare bright red. Raven, looking at her over Finn’s shoulder, nods. Talk later. Hunt now.

-

Raven keeps looking at her on the hike back, calculating. When she finally gets Clarke far enough away from the group, her first question is straight to the point.

“So. _Alpha_. You got pack?” She sounds like she’s talking about the weather. Clarke appreciates her candor.

“Nope. Not anymore.”

Raven shrugs one shoulder. “Damn. Sucks.”

Clarke focuses on maneuvering around a fallen log and just makes a noise of agreement. “Mm. You?”

“Nah. Don’t know my dad. My tía was loba, like me, but she’s dead now. They floated her before I turned.” Raven looks at her carefully before she asks her next question. “I’m not that surprised, though. Your mom smelled like a lot like wolf, too.”

Clarke bristles slightly at the mention of her mother. If Raven catches it, she doesn’t say anything.

“Okay, so lemme just get something straight first, here.” Raven makes a vague motion between the two of them. “This thing, here, doesn’t make a difference. You might be an alpha, but you’re not _my_ alpha. Capisce?”

Clarke smiles, grimly. “Please. Just don’t cause problems, and keep under the radar, I couldn’t care less.” She really couldn’t. Raven is cool, from what she can tell, and it might be because her shift was less than two nights ago, but Clarke doesn’t even have to try and stem the urge to run her off or force a submission. This isn’t about territory, not now. Besides, its nice not being on her own with this.  

“Yeah, I know the drill.” Raven sidesteps a puddle nimbly, her ponytail swinging with the movement, and Clarke is suddenly dying to know what she looks like shifted. Is she a full wolf, too? What about coloring? Are they the same? No, they can’t be. It wouldn’t make sense. Clarke’s heard about half-wolves, of course she has, all the werewolf stories that spread from people seeing the two legged malformed beasts—monsters that couldn’t hold a full shift. She knows she’s not one of them, her dad told her, and Raven seems too graceful to be anything less than full-blooded.

The girl in question turns to look at her over her shoulder. “Hey, how far are we from this camp, then?”

“Um, probably about two miles. Why?”

Raven grins, flashing her canines in the low light streaming through the trees. Clarke feels her heart speed up.

“Wanna race?”

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RAVVVEEEEENNNNNNNN.
> 
> Next up, more Blake family shenanigans. Also, The Secret won't stay secret for much longer.


	4. out of the woods

**CH 4: out of the woods**

 

There’s something big lumbering around the edge of the woods. She’s listening to it as it rustles through the shrugs near the back gate, making sure it knows who it's dealing with, that it knows to _stay away_ ; _I am here; I am waiting,_ when she hears heavy footsteps crunch through the leaves at her back. He walks as if he wants the whole world to know where he is, stomping through the mud and dirt like he’s leaving a message, but he slows when he comes up to her back.

His heartbeat is soft, steady like music. She can hear it all the time, now.

“You’re outside of the wall without a gun,” Bellamy admonishes her, and she can’t help it when she snorts mockingly, her eyes glowing softly in the dark.

The animal, whatever it is, catches her scent and scatters.

-

 

Clarke has two more weeks until her next shift, and yet she feels as if she’s been standing on the cusp of a change for days and days and days. She runs through the undergrowth every morning like she’s starving for it, and she woke herself up from a dream two nights ago with a mouth full of blood, from where her sharpened canines cut clean through her lip.

The cut heals in an hour. She doesn’t notice.

-

 

“I used to lock myself in the bottom compartment level of engine room 6.” Raven tells her one day, out of the blue. They're in the tent that's been singled out for a workspace, both of them content to stay on their own sides and work in silence, until now. Clarke stares, trying to find a way to answer that without showing her shock. Raven continues regardless, running her hand over the wiring on the makeshift workbench.

“I had this chain link harness set up down there, made it all by myself, and the door was locked and thick enough to be at least mostly soundproof. My mom would keep the key and come get me in the mornings, if she remembered. She didn’t like to think about it.” Her mouth twists. “La locura luna.”

Clarke furrows her brow. She's not good at oversharing, especially when it comes to feelings, but the way Raven brings it up she could be talking about the clouds. “Um. What?”

“That’s what they call it. You know—moon madness?”

“But, it’s got nothing to do with the moon, I thought.” Clarke sets down the jar she’s been packing with herbs, curious in spite of herself. She’s been studying textbooks on humanity for years and years, and its burns her like nothing else that she’s so lost when it comes to her own form. “My dad told me he thought it was just some mutated virus passed down through bloodlines?”

The other girl shrugs, uncaring. “When I was little my tía told me stories and stuff, but I didn’t really listen. A lot of concrete knowledge got lost with the bombs, ya know? You can never really know what’s real, so you gotta learn to roll with the punches.”

Easy for her to say. Her alpha senses are going haywire on the ground. Clarke can’t even sleep in her tent anymore because everyone in the camp is having sex and she can hear _all_ of it, all the time. She’s snappy and tired and hasn’t left the camp in two days because she hasn’t had any time, and her skin itches with the feeling of being trapped again.

“Where’d they chain you during the shift?” Raven must be in a talkative mood tonight. Clarke turns away and starts packing more herbs back into the containers and marking them just so she has something to do with her hands.

“They put me to sleep.” Raven is quiet for a long time, before she asks, carefully:

“Through the whole thing? Every time?”

She shrugs, defensive. “Yeah. Every time.”

“So you’ve never actually felt it? Shit. That’s—I’ve never heard of that. That can't be--so, what, you’ve been suppressing it?”

“ _No_. Maybe. I don’t—I know what it feels like, I just— it’s different now.” Clarke’s hands still over the table, and she sets her right hand onto the edge to steady herself. Somewhere in her chest, the wolf is barely holding in a snarl. “It’s more…intense.”

“Of course it is. You’re a damn alpha. _Without a pack_. Do you have a marker?”

She looks over her shoulder in confusion. “Marker?”

Raven barely glances up. The one think Clarke really appreciates about Raven is her ability to keep emotional conversations as blunt and straightforward as possible, as if they still want to stay distant no matter how similar they are. The animal side of Clarke needs that separation, no blurring of lines. Emotional territory is still territory, in the end.

“Yeah. Your marker— your anchor, your guy, your girl— whatever. Like how Finn is for me. Can’t you tell?”

She can, actually, now that she thinks about it. Finn, even with all his constant flirting, just makes her nervous. He gives her this vibe, _stay away, stay away, stay away_ , and she never noticed how it threaded through his scent, as if his very skin already held a warning. Huh. 

“No? I don’t…is that like, is it a process you have to intend? Or is it just from close contact? My dad never really said anything about it.” She wonders if it’s the same for humans, like how the Blake’s scents sometimes confuse her because they are so intertwined. Does she smell like anyone, she wonders? Her mother, her father, her dead best friend?

No, she thinks. Probably not.

Raven twists off the lid of one of the radio panels with a clunk, cursing lightly in Spanish while she tries to explain. “I don’t really know. I think it’s just instinct. Or it happens over time. You’ll get the hang of it, but, hey, you’d better hurry. Nothing good can come from an alpha without an anchor.”

-

 

Finn is lying on the table with a knife in his side, and Abby Griffin’s voice is thin and weak as it spills through the radio signal, and Raven’s normally dark eyes are starting to glow yellow under the dim lighting on the ship, making her gaze turn honey-gold and terrified, and she’s shaking and growling and snarling as Clarke tries to wrap her hands around the knife hilt, and Clarke is going mad.

Raven won’t let anyone near the wound. Finn is going to die.

“Bellamy. Get her _out of here_.” The older Blake sibling is standing with his sister on the other side of their makeshift med-bay, cleaning up some scabs on her wrists from where the grounder tied her up, but he stands and walks towards their side as soon as she says his name.

“Reyes, c’mon. She’s gotta—“Bellamy reaches for Raven’s jacket sleeve, but she snaps her teeth at him (human, still, thank god) and jerks away. His eyes are wide and he throws his hands up in response. “Whoa. Okay. Let’s all just, take a step back.”

Clarke takes a deep breath. Raven goes back to curling her hand protectively around Finn’s leg on the table. “Raven,” she says, calmly. “You need to calm down. Let go of him.”

Bellamy is still standing behind the other girl, apprehensive, and when she doesn’t respond, he glances at Clarke as if to say ‘now what?’

Clarke takes another breath, wiping Finn’s blood off her hands. She can feel the stickiness of the red stains on her fingers, the smell thick and cloying in her throat, and she runs her tongue over her back teeth as if to remind them to stay flat.

She steps around the table, ignoring Bellamy’s cautious “Clarke, maybe you shouldn’t—,” and leans next to the other girl. Raven barely flicks a glance at her, her eyes turn molten gold as she breathes in heavily. Raven bares her teeth. Bellamy’s eyebrows raise to his hairline, and he calls over his shoulder, “Hey, O, get Miller—hurry.”

“Save him,” Raven grits out. In the distance, Clarke can hear her mother’s voice in the tinny speaker, demanding to know what’s going on, Clarke, what’s happening, answer me right now—

“I will, but you need to let go. I can’t fix him with you here,” she glances at Bellamy, who’s waiting outside on the ramp for help but still within range, and drops her voice lower,” where you’re about to stage a scene from _Wolfman_ , okay. Go run it off.”

“I can’t—Clarke, he’s _dying_ , I can’t—“ she hunches over and shudders out a breath, and Clarke can see the tip of an incisor as it struggles past her lip. “ _Clarke_.”

Clarke reacts instinctively, wrapping a hand around Raven’s exposed neck and lifting her bodily away from the table. Bellamy comes back with Miller in tow, just in time to see the two of them literally at each other’s throats, Raven’s hands scrabbling for purchase on Clarke’s wrists. Clarke doesn't even break a sweat.

Miller mutters a half-silent _what the fuck_ in the background while Clarke presses her thumb hard and deep into the juncture underneath Raven’s jawline, forcing her to look her full in the face as she bites out: “Hey. _Calm_ the fuck _down_.”

A beat passes. Raven stills, reluctantly. Something rumbles in Clarke’s chest, and she releases her hand from the other girl’s neck. She can feel her eyes burning blood red as Raven shrinks back.

Bellamy and Miller are silent behind her.

Clarke blinks. Steps away.

“Good,” she says, instead. “Now, let me do my job.”

“Fuck you,” snaps Raven, tensed up tighter than a bowstring. But she spins around, knocking Miller out of the way with her shoulder and causing him to stumble into the entryway, and marches out of the ship without another word.

Clarke waits until her eyes settle back into icy blue, and turns back to the half-dead boy on the table. Her hands are still slick with blood. She’s hungry.

-

            

Dax makes his first mistake when he tries to kill her.

No, that’s not right; Dax makes his first mistake when he tries to kill Bellamy.

The jobi nuts are burning through her system in a fast, hard, rush of delusion. She’s riding the wave of her father’s voice, the vague, incorporeal feeling of his arms wrapping around her tight, holding her inside her own skin, when suddenly she’s hears a cry of pain and the line between wolf and girl melts into a blur of rage and want and instinct and suddenly she’s up and running.

She can hear his heartbeat thumping fast under her feet. Her fingertips sharpen.

Clarke bursts into the clearing, the image before her washing out until all she can see are two indistinct shapes colored in black and white; one slumped over in the dirt, stinking of grief, and the other standing with it’s back to her. Stupid.

Clarke sinks her claws into his throat and _rips_.

-

 Bellamy leans next to her against the tree, blinking away the after-effects of their hallucinations. “Did you just—“

 He reaches weakly for her hand. Dirty and stained, as usual, but the nails are blunt, round, human. He narrows his eyes in suspicion. “I thought you had…for a second I could’ve sworn—“

She lets him examine her hand more closely, rolling her head to the side to smile at him drowsily. “Yeah. Let’s not ever eat nuts from Jasper’s stock ever again, okay?”

Bellamy drops her hand and closes his eyes. “Right. Yeah. Good call, princess.”

Clarke watches as he exhales slowly, and feels a rush of something warm spread through her chest. He’s all but covered in hundred-year-old oil and dirt, leaves stuck to his skin, his face unrecognizable under a thick layer of blood, his hair is a rat’s nest, falling into his eyes; there’s tear tracks cut through on his cheeks, and he reeks of fear and guilt and that wet-sharp scent of rainwater that tickles her tongue, and she thinks distantly, this is _mine_.

Bellamy tilts his head back.

His neck is pale and smooth under the starlight, and for a long moment, she’s not sure if she wants to sink her teeth into the soft flesh or simply press a kiss to the skin.

The moon is almost full.

-

**Author's Note:**

> comments? questions? concerns? literally anything? just hit me up>>>theworthofhollin.tumblr.com


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